But in the depths of the club--in the depths of her own despair--Araby will
find more than oblivion. She will find Will, the terribly handsome proprietor
of the club, and Elliott, the wickedly smart aristocrat. Neither is what he
seems. Both have secrets. Everyone does.

And Araby may find not just something to live for, but something to fight
for--no matter

what it costs her. (goodreads)

Review:Atmospheric and tense, you see this world through
the eyes of Araby, a girl who wants to simply forget. She assumes her
parents blame her as much as she blames herself for what happened to her
brother and she floats through this post-plague world in a drug-induced haze
until events conspire to bring her face to face with the reality surrounding
her. This is a re-imagining and a fleshing out of Poe's extremely short
story, The Masque of the Red Death.

This takes place in an
alternative, steampunk-type reality where people have to wear masks to avoid
contracting the plague. There is no cure. Araby's father is a scientist
who developed the masks. So she is approached by the brother of a friend
to steal from her father to help the resistance, because of course there is an
evil prince who lives in a castle attended by people wearing masks...

"We take a sharp turn,
and the castle looms above us. I wasn't prepared for the immensity of it. Like
a giant hulking toad crouching out on the peninsula, coldly menacing and
exquisitely drab." (pg 144)

The story for me felt like I
could see it through gauze or smoke. It isn't that detailed or that crazy
until the end really, but things were left out and unknown because Araby hasn't
noticed what was going on around her until after we follow her about for a
while. Since it is in first person, we as readers see this world through
her drug-induced, head in the sand fog for quite some time. It is
brilliant really, because not too much came into sharp focus for me until the
end, when Araby finally begins to understand things which should have been
clearly evident for a while.

"Just because you don't
want to see something doesn't mean that it will go away. Do you think
inhumanity doesn't exist if you pretend not to see it? Or maybe get too drunk
to understand? We've forgotten the things that make life worthwhile." (pg
174)

You learn a lesson with
Araby, life goes on regardless of how much you don't to believe it.
Horrible things happen whether you see them or not, but so do wonderful
things. You have to LIVE to get the good with the bad. You have to care
to survive. Once she starts caring and trying, even in her half-hearted attempts,
things begin to happen.

There is a kind of love
triangle, which is off kilter by the end and I have absolutely no idea where
Griffin is going to take it. Honestly, I don't even know which guy I would root
for. That makes it supremely fun actually. So there is a bit of a
cliffhanger at the end because there is plenty more action that needs to
happen, and more things to work out, plus the plague seems to be morphing.

The bad guy is monstrous,
but there are a bunch of bad guys running around making mischief and things are
falling apart at the seams and it is uncertain who will triumph. I didn't
love this book the way some people seem to, but I enjoyed it quite a bit,
devoured it quickly and am looking forward to the next installation.
4 green and scaly stars, floating on a river, ready to chomp on the poor plague
ridden souls who have left this world.